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Disney Movies Anywhere Adds Fox, WB, Universal

The industry divide between UltraViolet and Disney Movies Anywhere could be ending. But instead of merging cloud-based storage platforms, UltraViolet backers 20th Century Fox, Warner Bros. and Universal Pictures are joining Disney’s KeyChest storage platform, according to Bloomberg. A formal announcement is pending.

Lionsgate is said to be interested, while financial disagreements are keeping Paramount Pictures on the sidelines, according to the report. No word about Sony Pictures.

READ MORE: http://variety.com/2017/digital/news...rt-1202585994/

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Disney and Fox Join Forces With Other Studios for New Download Service

Several major Hollywood movie studios have signed up to a new digital film service led by Walt Disney Co. that lets consumers buy movies and store them in a digital locker to access on their devices, people familiar with the matter said.

Disney has been courting studios to join its Movies Anywhere service since last year, Bloomberg News reported at the time. Customers can watch and keep their online film purchases at a single site through the product. 20th Century Fox, Warner Bros. and Universal Pictures are among the major studios joining the service, the people said. The plan could be announced as soon as this week, they said.

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Viacom Inc.’s Paramount Pictures is the only one of the six major studios that isn’t joining Movies Anywhere, because of a disagreement over financial terms, said one of the people, who asked not to be identified because the talks are private. Paramount, maker of the Transformers films, and smaller Lions Gate Entertainment Corp., home of “The Hunger Games,” are supportive of the concept and may join later, two people said.

Disney Movies Anywhere used a proprietary storage technology called KeyChest that allows consumers to access movies on one site, whether they’re purchased online from Apple Inc.’s iTunes, Amazon.com Inc., Google Inc. or a brick-and-mortar store like Wal-Mart Stores Inc. The service offered films from all of the company’s brands, including Disney, Pixar, Marvel and Lucasfilm.

READ MORE: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...wnload-service

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With the rise of Netflix Inc. and other video services, studios may be too late to persuade consumers to buy movies to keep and re-watch, said Rich Greenfield, analyst at BTIG said, who has a buy rating on Netflix and a sell rating on Disney.

“The consumer has moved on from ownership of media to access via subscription services,” he said.

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